Stefanos Tsitsipas might be one of the better players in the world, but he had a tough time in school dealing with bullying due to his shyness, which his mom recently revealed.
Professional athletes are people who have to go out and perform in front of millions of eyeballs. While that is very true, some players are still very shy. Some don't relish the publicity, and Tsitsipas is one of those athletes.
Despite being famously prominent in the public eye, the Greek player is more on the reserved side. It's just part of his nature, and it's always been like that. While known as a fearless player on the court who will step up to any challenge, the Greek player isn't like that in his private life.
He's generally soft-spoken and takes his time to answer any question. That's how he was as a kid as well, and it created some trouble for him during his school times.
His mother, Julia Apostoli, spoke about his childhood in a recent interview, as per the Greek publication Protothema, admitting that he was a very shy and very quiet child.
He was always very dedicated to tennis, which caused him to miss classes on occasion, and generally, the kids in his classes didn't really treat him very well.
"He was a very quiet child and very shy. Because of sports, he missed classes and the children he had in the class, cannot be called friends, because they treated him very badly."
Overall, it just wasn't a very easy time for Tsitsipas, but it helped him in other ways. It helped him focus more on tennis, which ultimately likely helped him become as good as he is today.
"It was not easy for Stefanos then, but he overcame it because he had tennis and his mind was there to go forward. And that helped him a lot."
Tennis, in many ways, became his escape from all of that. He dedicated even more time to the sport, which is likely why he became as good as he did. It's been a tough time recently on the courts for him, prompting him to make some shocking changes in the way he does things.
Most notably, he let go of his father as coach because he never existed as an entity in tennis without him. It's certainly a new era for the Greek player, and seeing how Tsitsipas handles that will be interesting.
It's going far away from his comfort zone, and considering how shy and reserved he is, it might just become tough to handle. Tennis has given him confidence, though, as we've seen him leave that shyness behind at times.
He prominently had a YouTube channel earlier in his career where he posted content from his life away from the courts, so clearly, he grew more comfortable showing himself to the world.
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